What a turbulent five weeks since I last drafted an article. Last week, we had over 100mm of rain, with 60mm in 24 hours and 15mm of that in an hour.

Many houses and businesses were flooded, and it’s not done the last planted crops any favours.

We have two hedgecutters running and two diggers busy ditching so, hopefully, we can alleviate heavy down pours. The first blocks we have done are already seeing a difference.

See also: Drilling regime and companion crop achieve high OSR yields on Hants farm

About the author

Robin Aird

Arable Farmer Focus writer Robin Aird manages 1500ha on the north Wiltshire and Gloucestershire border, with a further 160ha on a contract farming agreement. Soils vary from gravel to clay with the majority silty clay loams. The diverse estate has Residential, commercial and events enterprises. He is Basis qualified and advises on other farming businesses.

Read more articles by Robin Aird

The Budget has upset a large proportion of the nation on varying levels, and it has been particularly hard on agriculture.

It’s not very often you can be grateful of someone’s passing, but the impact on this business had the previous owner not died two years ago, but instead in a years’ time, would have been catastrophic.

This business alone supports over 250 jobs that are linked to the estate.

The capping of the residual Basic Payment Scheme has left us with a £55,000 blackhole.

Therefore, I printed off the latest booklet for Sustainable Farming Incentive 2024 and read that on the plane as I headed off on a walking holiday 10 days ago.

There are enough options and areas that we can use to help us fill this hole.

On the positive side, we somehow managed to get all our winter wheat planted into a good seed-bed after a magnificent flush of blackgrass.

We even managed to plant hybrid winter barley into the bare patches on the rye.

The barley is up and looking a picture. The first blocks of wheat are also looking good. Blackgrass control, at present, looks quite pleasing.

We managed to cut our small field of grain maize, which our neighbour Thomas carefully dried after we managed to force it over our system to clean most of the rubbish out of it.

This will go back over the system to clean it up ready for seed next year.

Our Christmas trees are now on sale, and I always find it a good barometer of the state of the public finances.

I have a nasty feeling that it will be a low tree-sale year this year.